It's nearly ten years since you established House of Cards, how has the past decade treated the Wray family? Have all your initial plans now come to fruition? Any unexpected developments or surprises over the years?
Wow it really has been that long! We are just about to harvest our eleventh Vintage, crazy how time flies! I think most of our initial plans have changed and evolved quite considerably over the past decade. We were pretty fresh back in 2011, coming back to WA after living and working in New Zealand and Canada. We had also travelled throughout the US wine regions of Oregon and Napa.
Vintage 2011, our first for House of Cards, the wines from these regions played heavily on our minds and these were the styles we chased. Over the last decade we've learnt about our particular site and the flavours of the grapes grown and how this translates into the wines we make. Trav's winemaking gets better and better each vintage and I'm so proud of where he's taken the wines.
In the vineyard we have grafted over vines to Petit Verdot, Malbec, and superior clones of Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot. When we first started the vineyard was conventionally farmed and lacked a lot of soil health so we have worked super hard to improve this, practising organic farming increasingly over the last 10 years and now we are fully certified by ACO. As a brand we focussed on improving the quality of each wine with all wines in our range taking on their own identity to match their unique flavour and personality. Oh yeah we've also managed to get married, build a house and have 3 little boys too, we've been a bit busy!
Travis studied Viticulture and Oenology after spending five years in the Royal Australian Navy as a Clearance Diver, which has to be one of the most extreme career changes we've heard to date! What inspired this drastic career change or had winemaking always been a secret passion? Haha it's quite the change isn't it?! Food and wine have always been of interest to Trav, he grew up near the famous Coonawarra wine region in South Australia but wine really became a focal point when he moved to Western Australia. After Trav had partial hearing loss from diving he was given a medical discharge and decided he never wanted to be cold, sleep deprived and physically exhausted ever again so decided to study Viticulture and Oenology. Now he's just sleep deprived and physically exhausted!
You've mentioned 'no plans to get bigger, only better' which we cannot wait to see! What new developments do you foresee for the next ten years for House of Cards? Will we see new wines from you in the future?
Our vineyard gets healthier and healthier each year with organic soil inputs and the nutrition of our vines along with vine age keeps improving the fruit that we're seeing. We will continue to explore the best clones of each varietal and each year keep refining winemaking techniques in small batch winemaking. Each year we learn some pretty valuable lessons in terms of winemaking and currently we are talking about length of maturation in French oak so this will play a pretty important role in how the wines are made. Winemaking is such a perfect balance of art and science and individual taste so we will continue to experiment and make decisions on what we believe makes the best wine.
Can you take our customers on a virtual tour of your cellar door? We know that it's not just about the wines as you also exhibit art and jewellery from Australian artists. Who is responsible for this and where did the inspiration come from?
(If it's easier, a short, natural video made on a phone to give us a peek around would be fantastic? Would you like us to feature some of these artists in our e-magazine? We email over 3000 customers with our communications and I'm sure they'd love to see some regular updates on what you are up to?)
We are actually moving away from gifts in our cellar door so please omit this question. I will upload a virtual tour of our cellar door on dropbox to share with you.
You also have a restaurant located a few metres from your cellar door which specialises in Chinese/Malay cuisine. What are the current highlights on the menu? Do you get involved with the food yourself? (Would Chef Mal Chow be willing to write some pieces for us about the food scene in the Margaret River and the seasonal selections at Chow's Table? We'd also love to ask him a few questions about the restaurant if this is a possibility?)
Yes Chow's Table opened about two and a half years ago now, Chef Mal Chow is director and head chef and is in full control of what happens in the restaurant. Mal recently was awarded a Hat in the Australian Good Food Guide. His food is absolutely delicious and totally moreish...we eat here weekly and crave it daily! We host wine tastings with other winemaking friends and wine dinners. We've also had a couple of parties to launch new wines in this space.
You were recently fully certified as an organic vineyard, huge congratulations! What changes did you have to make for this? Can you tell us about your organic practices and how you feel these positively impact your wines?
Thanks heaps, we are so proud of this achievement, it has taken a lot of time....and paperwork! We are now certified with ACO (Australian Certified Organics). For three years prior to full certification we were certified 'In-Conversion', meaning all vineyard inputs have to be organic. Our focus has been on first improving soil health by increasing the amounts of bacteria, fungi and protozoa. We achieve this with the use of planting mid row cover crops which increase nitrogen and other key elements to the vines. We make our own composts using a mixture of organic mulch, hay and recycled grape marq from vintage. We have guinea fowl which roam the vineyard scratching undervine and eating bugs. We use dacron bands to stop the weevils walking into the vine canopy. We spray fish and seaweed onto the foliage and we make our own compost teas by aerating a blend of worm castings, molases, lucern, seaweed, fish and humates. This is then sprayed throughout the vineyard. Our belief is to give the vines enough beneficials so they themselves can effectively fight pathogens rather than us try to kill the pathogens directly and in turn inadvertently impact vine health. We believe the flavours are so much better in organic fruit and this translates into better wine. To make the best wine you need the best fruit.
Can you invoke huge amounts of envy during our long British winter by describing your little patch in the Margaret River? What makes it such a paradise in which to live and work? (Again, if you fancied grabbing a cell phone a making a short video to show us around, that would be amazing! Although it might force me to book a flight immediately...)
Our family lives on our 12Ha vineyard in Yallingup, the Northern end of the Margaret River Wine Region. It's currently the middle of January, about 29 degrees and I have just returned from taking my three little boys to Meelup Beach, the same spot Trav and I got married about 9 years ago. We live about 5km from the beach about 20km to the nearest town and have no neighbours. Margaret River as a region has about 200 wine producers, the region makes only about 4% of Australia's total wine production but about 25% of it's premium market. The region is best known for Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay. Tonight our family plus two Golden Retrievers will head back to the beach for a picnic where we'll definitely have a bottle of Chardy and watch the sunset, the hardest decision we'll make is choosing which beach to go to!
